


The Immortal Beloved

by manatee_patronus



Category: Immortal Beloved (film), Ludwig van Beethoven - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Tickling, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 03:01:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7959847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manatee_patronus/pseuds/manatee_patronus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 1812, Ludwig van Beethoven is distraught that he cannot find a life partner who shares his social and sexual oddities. When his friend Johann Wolfgang von Goethe takes him to 2015 America with the help of a time machine, Beethoven discovers far more than he imagined possible: a world with mystifying new technology, a generation that still remembers and reveres his music, and a kind young woman who might be his true love. Their fateful meeting impacts history in a way that neither of them could have predicted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Immortal Beloved

**Author's Note:**

> The letters at the end of the story are direct quotes of Beethoven's (real) 3 letters to the Immortal Beloved, which were found among his belongings after his death; historians are still not 100% certain about the identity of the Immortal Beloved.
> 
> Additionally, all dates and mentions of compositions and other actual historical events are consistent and accurate to the best of my knowledge.

**April 1812**

Ludwig van Beethoven was taking a holiday in the Bohemian spa town of Teplice, hoping that the peace, quiet, and verdant nature in the surrounding countryside would soothe his ailing soul. He felt depressed about his continuing loss of hearing – he could still hear a little in one ear, but everything came to him muffled and far away. He had started to read lips rather than try to untangle the thin thread of conversations. He was tired of people shouting at him…indeed, company had started to give him more pain than pleasure lately…

And yet…With a sigh, Beethoven plopped down on the grass by the merrily trickling brook and crossed his legs. He yearned for love and for the chance to share a certain unique, sexual pleasure with someone special. He had thought of trying it out with his former student and lover, Giulietta Guiciardi. Like every other romantic endeavor in his life, it had ended in failure.

There had been a day when she was practicing in his shadowy sitting room. He reclined on his divan, watching the curve of her pale neck undulate as she slid dreamily through the Mozart sonata that she always warmed up with. Her soft, plump arms were bare and uplifted as her fingers danced along the keys, and Beethoven imagined the hollows beneath them, the tender swath of skin barely covered by the flared short sleeves of her silk dress. He imagined tiptoeing up behind her, kissing her neck, and barely wiggling his index fingers in those soft underarms – imagined her tinkling Mozart faltering as she giggled and fell back into him, perhaps clutching playfully at his hands…

Alas, he hadn’t had the nerve, and only a few days later, she had recounted a story which crushed his fantasy forever, a story about a physician who had visited her during a protracted illness some years ago.

“I was made to lie face-up while he examined my body for any abrasions or rashes. It tickled dreadfully!” She shuddered and Beethoven crossed his legs as part of him threatened to rise. “It was horrible!” She shook her head, and with a drooping of his heart, Beethoven knew that it was all over between them…

All of a sudden, there was a hard pushing at his back and Beethoven jumped, nearly falling into the creek. He clambered to his feet and turned around, brushing the grass stains off of his pants, only to see his friend Johann Wolfgang von Goethe laughing at him.

“I wish you wouldn’t keep doing that,” Beethoven told him irritably before sitting down and gesturing for Goethe to do the same. “How did you find me anyway? Oh wait,” Beethoven looked over and saw the small, square box in Goethe’s hands. “It was that time contraption of yours, again, wasn’t it?” Goethe had received the time machine in strange circumstances a year or so ago. He had told Beethoven somewhat evasively that a scientist friend had given it to him in exchange for dedicating one of his books to him.

Goethe’s voice was loud enough for Beethoven to hear it quite clearly without reading his lips. This was one thing he liked about Goethe’s company. “Yes, it was, my friend! And I’ve decided that it’s time for you to try it out with me! Was denkst du?”

Beethoven huffed, propped his elbow on his knee, and rested his chin on that hand. “I see no reason to squander my hopes on a future in which I do not even exist.”

“I think you’ll be surprised about that, actually,” Goethe said. “And you need to live a little. You’re like Eeyore, so negative all the time.”

“What is Eeyore?” Beethoven asked.

“He is a donkey,” Goethe informed him. “He is a character in a sort of opera of the future. I can show you that, too.”

Beethoven sighed again heavily as he considered. Then, figuring he had nothing better to do anyway, he nodded and said, “OK, I’ll come with you just once. But you’re _sure_ that there will be many beautiful women.”

Goethe nodded emphatically. “Yes. So many women. All the women. All enraptured by our sexy accents.”

“You talk strange now. Is that how people speak in the future?”

“You’ll see, now take my arm.”

Beethoven did as he was instructed while Goethe fiddled with the square box in front of him, which had dials and a place to enter numbers and letters with little raised buttons.

“Where are we going?” Beethoven asked.

“To the capital of the New World, 2015.”

“What, America?” Beethoven raised his eyebrows. “That mudhole?”

Goethe grinned, wide-eyed, at him. “It’s no mudhole in the future,” he said. “Just wait and see.” He squared his feet. “All right, you ready?”

“I suppose.”

Goethe hit the largest button on the box, and all of a sudden, everything went dark. All that Beethoven could perceive was the feeling of Goethe’s arm, still gripped in his hand, and a humming in the ground beneath his feet.

**April 2015**

Just as suddenly, the ground stopped humming and all light and noise flooded back into the world. But instead of finding himself by the merry creek, Beethoven was now beside a bustling road, thick with the traffic of some kind of horseless carriage that conveyed people to and fro. A loud blaring noise came from some of them, like a French horn hitting a sour note. Meanwhile, Beethoven felt a surge of irritation as chattering crowds of scantily- and strangely-dressed people shunted past him, and as senseless music roared out of the open doors of shops all along the street, all different songs so that their mingling yielded an unbearable, brutal cacophony. It was too much noise, too much color, too many people!

“Hey. Ludwig. Bro, come here.” On top of the sensory overload, Beethoven now felt himself yanked by the arm, pulled into a small alley between shops that was, at least, mercifully empty.

“Why did you call me Bro? What does that even mean?” Beethoven moaned, his hands over his ears, which were buzzing painfully.

“Never mind that, it’s just a thing people call each other here. It’s like ‘Bruder,’ just English, see? Now here, lean against the wall and calm down. Everything is OK, it’s just a lot at first. Are you all right?”

“No,” Beethoven said mournfully. “I want to go back, I don’t like this.”

Goethe was frustrated. “Now hey, come on, you’ve got to give it more of a chance than that,” he wheedled. “At least come see this before you make your decision.”

Reluctantly, Beethoven followed him down the cool dark alleyway. When they neared the bright end of it, which opened on another noisy street filled with people and cars, Beethoven hesitated. “No, come on,” Goethe insisted, taking Beethoven by the hand. “Now look at that.”

Beethoven peeked out around the corner of the building and saw - a picture of himself. It was mounted high in the air, on top of another building. Beneath his painted chin, block letters spelled out,

**National Symphony Orchestra:**

Beethoven’s 5th Symphony

May 10-15, Kennedy Center

 

“You are still remembered, you are still _beloved_ \- in 2015. All over the world,” Goethe told him in a rare hushed voice full of respect. Beethoven was speechless. His life back in his present was a constant struggle, trying to prove himself despite his deafness, despite that handicap in him that should be the death knell of any man of music. Yet somehow...he had made a name for himself in the scroll of fame. Remembered...beloved...the words reverberated in his head and he felt the beginning of fondness for this alien, hostile world that Goethe had brought him to.

"Goaty! There you are!" A busty blonde with her bosom mostly visible in her white tank top was making her way directly toward them, though Beethoven could not figure why - looking sideways, he saw that Goethe was blushing.

"Goaty?" Beethoven murmured, a smirk twisting his grim lips.

Goethe grinned with embarrassment. "She couldn't pronounce my name at first, so now it's become a nickname," he muttered. He raised his voice again as he addressed the girl, who flung herself into his arms, "Katie! My love! How have you been?"

The girl leapt back again, clutching a plastic bag on her arm. "Great! I had midterms the other day, but I think they went well, and today I'm shopping with the girls." A few yards away, a group of women around Katie's age waved at them, their arms also laden with bags. "Who's your friend?" She turned her bright gaze on Beethoven.

"Katie, this is my dear friend Ludwig van Beethoven," Her eyes lit up with recognition. "I convinced him to come with me today. He's never been to the future before."

"I know who you are!" Katie trilled. Beethoven smiled. Then she started to sing Mozart's "Rondo alla Turca." Beethoven looked over at Goethe confusedly. With a small shake of his head and a grimace, Goethe both apologized and advised Beethoven not to comment on the girl's mistake. "I used to take piano lessons," Katie added when she had finished singing the theme of another composer.

"I see," Beethoven said. "And you have a lovely voice, too,"

"Aw, thank you!" Katie gushed. "I'm in the Superfood A-Cappella group. You should come see us sing since you're a music guy."

Beethoven wanted to ask what an A-Cappella group was, but at that moment Katie turned to Goethe and said, "Do you have your car, Goaty? Do you mind driving me and the girls around for a while, and then we can go to dinner later?"

"Sure thing, sweet cakes," Goethe said. "It's parked down by the river." Addressing Beethoven, he pointed up a gradually sloping hill. "We are on M Street right now. Up there," he said, "Is the Georgetown University campus. Walk up that way and you'll meet all kinds of interesting people." He winked and Beethoven knew that by "people" he meant "women." "Whatever you end up doing, come meet us at Serendipity for dinner at 7:00."

"Where is Serendipity?" Beethoven asked.

Goethe threw a small, black object at him. "This is a phone. It lets you talk to people even when they are far away. If you touch my name in there," Goethe walked to Beethoven's side to show Beethoven the contact list in the phone, "then you'll be able to talk to me. There's also a map in there," he pointed out Google Maps, "so when it gets close to 7:00, just type in Serendipity and it'll show you where to go."

"OK?" Beethoven said uncertainly, marveling at the new technology.

"Yes," Goethe said distractedly. "Now I've got to go with die fräulein, but I'll see you later." He walked off with Katie and her friends.

Beethoven ducked back into the alley for a few minutes to experiment with the new phone. After he gave up on understanding most of it, he decided to take Goethe's advice and walk toward the school. It took a bit of courage to emerge from the cool peace of the alley, but he did it, and soon he was surging along at the same pace as the brightly-dressed crowd, his dark, old-fashioned garments drawing the curious stares of a few college girls.

"I wonder if he's going to go do a re-enactment," he heard one young man mutter to his friend.

"Nah, dude, he looks like an old composer, he's probably doing some marketing thing for a Kennedy Center show or something."

Beethoven didn't know what marketing was, or whether he was being mocked, but decided to march on, his chin high, his lips drawn in a serious, imperturbable line.

After a few blocks, it was easy to see the approaching university. A beautiful, castle-like building towered above the bustling shops of M Street. Beethoven's mouth fell open as he gazed at it and concluded that maybe America was not such a mudhole after all.

He crossed M Street, climbed up a steeper hill, and then turned so that he was walking directly toward the front of the university, strolling down a broad, cobbled, tree-lined avenue populated with college students. While they called out different, unrecognizable things to each other, he could sense the same youthful energy he had witnessed in the scholarly areas of Vienna, and he felt the comfort of familiarity.

Passing the gates, Beethoven walked directly into the shadow of the castle building. He stood beneath it, indecisive. Should he go in there? Many students milled about on the expansive front lawn, throwing a colored disc back and forth, sprawling on the grass, kissing beneath the green-leafed trees. He decided against going in the building, lest classes still be ongoing.

A piece of paper skittered along the ground and folded itself around Beethoven's leg. He plucked it off and looked at it curiously. It was a poster advertising a free concert in McNeir Hall. A visiting pianist and cellist would be playing the chamber music of Brahms. Beethoven didn't know who Brahms was, but he figured that this was the sort of crowd that he ought to mingle with. He felt nervous about approaching any of the surrounding women - it felt too aggressive - so he walked over to a young, blond man with sunglasses who was sitting on a low wall nearby.

"Excuse me," Beethoven said, still clutching the poster. "Could you tell me how to find McNeir Hall?"

"Ah, yeah," the youth said in a lazy voice. He pointed behind Beethoven. "You just go down there between Healy and Copley, and then you go left through the brick tunnel, and then when you come out of the tunnel you go down some stairs and you're right there."

"Thank you," said Beethoven, and turned to walk that way.

"No problem, dude."

When Beethoven reached the labelled entrance to McNeir Hall, he found that the door was locked. He read a sheet of paper in the window that said, "Concert in Progress," and realized that he must be late, and that they must have locked the entry door after the concert began. Cursing his luck, he continued down the staircase that had led initially to McNeir, and found himself on a wide street bordered by different-shaped buildings as well as a field that seemed to be used for some kind of recreational activity. At the moment, there were young men running across the field with sticks. They reminded him of warriors, the way they yelled and converged on each other.

Beethoven continued across the broad street and walked listlessly between the field and a U-shaped building on his left, his hands clasped loosely behind his back. He craved solitude now, and a piano...he had been foolish to think that he would find the answer to his romance problems here. None of these women rushing by spared him a glance. His awkwardness around others, his impatience with the social maneuvers of flirting and wooing, even his difficulty hearing - all of these conspired to make him a lonely man. But more than these, it was his strange sexual desire for tickling, which had been the downfall of his brief relationship with Giulietta, that condemned him to a life without satisfaction.

He rounded the corner of the U-shaped building and walked along its backside. There were fewer students here - he assumed that there must not be as many classrooms back here. He peered in windows as he walked. There was a library, a hallway, a room full of white humming machines with things swirling around in them ( _clothes?_ he wondered), and a room with a piano and a girl...

He stopped. The window was cracked slightly, and Beethoven approached close to it in order to observe the girl and try to hear at least a strain of the music she played. The girl was not gorgeous by any means, but something about her exuded kindness and comfort. Her face was round, her brown hair cut short to curl around it, and he could see that her shoulders were milky pale as they moved gently up and down.

Something about the music arrested him. He could only hear pockets of it as it waxed and waned in intensity, but it spoke to him of yearning - his own yearning. He could not place it in any song he had heard in living memory - but he had to know what song it was and who wrote it...if he walked away now and never found out, the unknown tune would haunt him with regret until his dying day.

He looked around frantically, trying to find a door into the building. He spotted one a few yards away and jogged over to it. Yet no matter how hard he heaved on the handle, it would not budge. He turned this way and that, looking for a button or switch, or something he could try to pick the lock with, then jumped out of the way as the door opened before him. A group of boys tramped out of it, not even noticing him - he grabbed the handle as it started to swing shut and darted inside.

Now he was in a small entrance room with a desk and a few sofas pushed against the wall. The faint sound of the music floated to him from a closed door on his right. Noiselessly, he crept over to the door and wrapped his fingers around the knob. Praying for silence so that the girl would keep playing, he twisted the knob millimeter by millimeter until he was able to ease it open. He squeezed through the door, grabbed the handle by the other side, and put the door back into place, not making a sound the entire time.

Here she was, the kind-faced girl sitting at a glossy, black grand piano that was big enough to swallow her whole and occupy the majority of the small room besides. Beethoven had never seen such a beautiful instrument his whole life, and he yearned to touch it, but he restrained himself and moved to stand by the wall.

One of the girl's eyes flickered over to him as he moved within her peripheral vision - he stood stock still, anxious that she would throw him out - there was a brief hardening of her features into an expression that he thought might be irritation, but then her attention returned to where her hands moved on the keys. She continued playing, ignoring him. He felt an odd swell of affection for both her irritation and her resolution to finish the song despite his presence - these were both reactions that he related to: his hatred for being interrupted while playing and his dedication to finishing his music, carrying it through, before dealing with whatever or whoever might be waiting to bother him. Feeling secure that his presence had been registered and that she would not stop playing, he took a seat in a chair against the wall and watched her finish the piece.

The quiet, peaceful part of the piece gave way to a few dark interludes, like dark halls in abandoned church ruins or the color of the sky when storms break across it. Eventually, the song returned to the main theme, but now in triplet form, like a gentle waltz, moving inexorably to a gentle resolution in E major.

Beethoven watched the girl lift first her fingers and then, slowly, her foot from the echo pedal. She turned to face him on the bench, her face not irritated but seemingly resolved for something unpleasant.

"Do you have the room reserved?" she asked him.

"Me?" Beethoven said. "Oh no, I just - I was just outside and I heard you play and I had to know what song it was, I've never heard it before...you played it masterfully."

She grinned shyly. "Thanks. It is one of the late sonatas of Beethoven." Beethoven's eyebrows shot up. "The first movement of his 30th." His mind reeled for a moment. How could he not recognize a song that he had written? _I haven't written it yet_ , he realized as he pondered it. This sonata was written in his future, and this girl's past...

"Are you a professor?" the girl asked kindly. She stood and approached him with her hand outstretched. "My name's Kira Lyn."

Beethoven took her hand, trying to keep his own from trembling out of nervousness. "I'm Ludwig." He stopped apologetically, realizing that he would need to explain his circumstances eventually, and now would be the best time. "Ludwig van Beethoven," he finished.

She smirked, and again he felt a strange affection for this quality of sarcasm and gentle mockery that he related to so well. " _The_ Ludwig van Beethoven?"

"I'm afraid so."

"If you are the real Ludwig van Beethoven, which at the moment I naturally don't believe," - Beethoven nodded to demonstrate that he understood her doubt - "then how did you get here?"

"My friend, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, has a machine that allows him to travel through time and space. He persuaded me to accompany him today."

She looked around at waist height, as though mock-searching for a dog. "Where is he, then?"

"With his girlfriend." Beethoven exhaled. "I believe he is in a relationship with one of your classmates."

Kira snorted. "OK, then tell me this: When is your birthday?"

Beethoven laughed darkly. "What kind of poor excuse for an impersonator would I be if I didn't know the birthday of the man that I was impersonating?"

She continued to look at him expectantly.

"December 16th," he answered finally. She nodded, though he could tell she wasn't satisfied.

"Who's the immortal beloved?" she asked suddenly, sitting down on the bench as she spoke to him.

"Who?" Beethoven asked, genuinely curious.

"The woman you wrote your beautiful love letters to, the most beautiful love letters I've ever read," Kira said.

"I don't know," Beethoven said honestly, pondering all of his relationships which had so far ended in failure.

"Then how can you be the real Beethoven?" she asked him.

"I'm not coming to you at the end of my life, you know," Beethoven said indignantly. "So there are some things about my life that I still do not know - this immortal beloved, the piano sonata - these things have not happened in my life yet. Can you imagine how strange it is for me to arrive in a world where others know things about my life that haven't happened for me yet?"

She watched him intently, and he felt that her doubt might be melting away. "In your world," she asked him quietly, "How many symphonies have you written so far?"

"Seven, but the most recent has not premiered yet," Beethoven replied. Then, struck by curiosity, "How many will I write?"

"Nine," she said. He did not know how to feel about this. He was already more than halfway done with his symphonic career - did this mean he was going to die soon? He felt a brief swoon from mortality. "OK, I have one last question, and then I'll believe that you're Beethoven."

"And what is that?" Beethoven asked, letting the shadow of flirtation creep into his voice.

She gestured to the piano bench. "Play me..." she paused as she thought about it. "the theme from the second movement of the third symphony."

"'Marcia funebre,'" Beethoven murmured, straightening his shirt as he took a seat on the bench. He figured she had chosen the movement for its obscurity, making it more likely that only the real Beethoven would know it. Of course, he played it flawlessly.

"OK," she said resignedly. "I suppose I believe you, then."

He laughed. "Now that we've got that behind us, why don't you tell me a little more about yourself?"

Over the next few minutes, Beethoven learned more about Kira, including the fact that she was in her fourth and final year at the university, she was studying international relations, and she had never taken piano lessons.

"What?" he interrupted disbelievingly. "I might not have heard that right." He stuck a finger in his ear and she laughed.

"No, it's true, I just do it for pleasure. My grandfather started to give me lessons when I was four, but I wouldn't have it then. I was frustrated by being told that I could not yet play the greats. Like you," she said shyly. She looked down at her hands, folded in her lap.

"Well, I am honored to have heard you play my music," Beethoven said quietly.

She peeked up at him and grinned. "Is this your first time in America?"

"Yes," he said. "Have you ever visited Germany before?"

"No," she said. "But I've always wanted to go there and to Vienna."

"If you ever get a chance," Beethoven told her emphatically, "You should go, particularly to Vienna. It is the music capital of the world. And beautiful. The curving streets, the theaters...I love it. And then, when I need a break, I go to the country."

"I understand that," Kira said. "It's wonderful being in the capital of the US for my major, but big city living exhausts me. Every now and then I visit family back home in North Carolina. Being alone, away from people and the hustle and bustle of the city, is refreshing."

For a moment they simply sat together without speaking. Beethoven didn't feel the least bit uncomfortable, and he could tell that she didn't either. They simply did not have to speak. And it was a relief for him because he did not have to stare at her lips and wait to read them again.

"Are you busy this afternoon?" Beethoven asked her.

She shook her head.

"Well, as this is my first time in America, and as I am thus far enjoying your company," Beethoven faltered, feeling nervous. His cheeks were warm. "I was, ah, wondering if you'd like to...show me around? Only if you want to, though."

She beamed. "Of course I'd like to."

"But first, since I interrupted your practice, I'd love to hear you play more music," Beethoven bustled back over to the chair and gestured to the bench for her to sit down.

She shook her head humbly and said, "That's OK, I was almost finished anyway. It'll be really boring just to sit and listen to me play."

Beethoven smiled and raised his eyebrows. "I enjoyed listening to you," he told her very seriously.

Heartened by this, she rose and returned to the piano bench. She started with a Bach Invention. "I always start off with Bach," she told him as her fingers danced around the keys independently. "because it helps make my fingers nimble." When she was finished, she wiggled her fingers at him to demonstrate this. He was sitting quite close to her in the chair, and he instinctively shrank back and giggled, mistakenly assuming that she was going to tickle him. As his penis twitched pleasurably with excitement, he reset his face into its characteristic (benign) glower, folded his arms across his stomach, and crossed his legs. Her eyes flashed wickedly and sensually as she looked quickly from his face to his folded arms and back again. However, she didn't say anything, and Beethoven was left to wonder if she, too, was excited by the idea of tickling him.

Next she played a few modern songs to show Beethoven what music was like nowadays. He didn't particularly care for most of it - it was too simple and straightforward. She teased him as he bemoaned the decline of culture. “But to think that once we had Bach! And now we have this!” he insisted. “Things were already deteriorating in my time but to think that the time of great music is over entirely?!” But one song he did like - it had a haunting melody in the very strange key of B flat minor, and her voice was floaty and ghostly as she sang a syncopated rhythm. He learned afterward that this song was by a person named Regina Spektor.

“A female composer! There were not many in my day,” Beethoven said.

“Yeah, she’s pretty amazing,” Kira said. “She went to Juilliard and everything.”

            Finally, she played another movement from one of his sonatas - this time, the “Adagio cantabile” from the “Pathetique,” which he had already written in his own lifetime. He laid his hand on the top of the piano, feeling the vibrations, and lowered his head as close to the keys as he could. She played it so beautifully - faltering at some of the more technical moments, of course - but she breathed such life, such passion into the notes, that he was moved merely by the new soul that she brought to it. It was as if he was experiencing it again, from another’s perspective - and the most moving part of the experience, for him, was the idea that she felt the same way about the music as he did - the same sorrow, the same quiet celebration and contentment.

            After she had finished, he kept his forehead against the cool black case of the piano for a moment before looking over at her. Kira watched him nervously, waiting for him to critique her performance.

            “You played wonderfully,” he told her quietly. She looked relieved. “There were a few technical errors,  but I can help you with these.”

            “Yes, please!” she said, scooting over on the bench.

            His heart thumping wildly, he took a seat next to her. Their thighs and shoulders were touching. His hands, clasped in his lap, itched to caress her waist.

            “So, which part did I mess up on?” she asked.

            He hesitated, not wanting to offend. “Well,” he said diplomatically, “The way you did the ornament, in the F minor part, was not quite how I had intended it,”

            “You mean this?” she asked, playing the ornament again, the wrong way.

            He nodded. “Yes, that part exactly. Now,” his heart still pounding, he slid around to her other side, took hold of her right hand in both of his own, and positioned it on the keys so that her wrist was aloft - he noticed the fine hairs on her arm standing up. “Place your hand like this, and then the first three notes up are fast, and the last two down are like part of a triplet, see?”

            “Ah!” she said delightedly. “Like that?”

            “Not quite,” Beethoven said fairly. He stood up and moved directly behind her, looking toward the window. His countenance was nonchalant, but his insides were tempestuous as he steeled himself to do something bold. “Try again,” he said.

            This time she managed the run perfectly.

            “That was wonderful,” Beethoven exclaimed. Kira turned slightly around and beamed at him. Beethoven took this as a cue to do the thing he was daring himself to do. He leaned forward slowly, still behind her but with his cheek nearly pressing against hers, and took both of her wrists loosely between his thumb and forefinger on each hand. “It’s all,” he murmured, lightly tracing his fingertips back along the underside of her arms, closer and closer to her armpits and the rest of her body. She trembled and he could hear her breathing quicken and become irregular, as though she were resisting laughter. “In a _flick_ ,” he tickled her bare underarms. She gasped, giggled delightfully and fell back against him as she squirmed. “Of the wrist,” he finished.

            He wasn’t sure what to do after that. He had laid his cards on the table and all he could do was wait for her to react. Instead of reproaching him for tickling her, however, or pretending that he hadn’t done it, Kira reacted in a most unexpected way: still leaning back against him, her face turned slightly so she could breathe in his chest, she arced her right arm up over her head, exposing her underarm again as she threaded her fingers through his flyaway hair, kneading his scalp.

            “I think if you were to do that every time I messed up,” she murmured sensually, “I would learn very quickly not to make mistakes.”

Grinning happily, Beethoven lightly traced his finger in a circle in the hollow of her armpit and she giggled and twitched, but did not draw her hand away. “I think that can be easily arranged,” Beethoven returned her flirtatious murmur, settling down onto his knees behind her so that he was at eye-level with her ribs and waist. “Why don’t you play it from the beginning?”

“Oh no,” she moaned, laughing nervously. “What have I gotten myself into?”

“Perhaps nothing,” Beethoven teased, “Provided you play the piece exactly as I dreamed it up in my brilliant mind.”

“I see that flirting brings out your humility as well as your kinkiness.”

Beethoven poked her bottom-right rib, which she clutched, laughing. “Naturally,” he replied. He felt exhilarated. He had found another girl - no, another _human being_ \- who seemed to derive sexual satisfaction from tickling. Who knew that such a fantastical thing existed? Beethoven had always assumed that he was the only one, and he was so secretive about his fetish that he had never even mentioned it to his closest friends, not even to Goethe.

“I’m going to do the first movement now,” Kira announced, placing her hands lower on the keyboard.

Beethoven grinned and teased her, “Are you sure you want to do that, my dear, self-taught Süßling? That movement is very fast and dense, and your fingers might accidentally _slip,_ ” he lightly spidered his fingers from her ribs down to her hips. She almost fell off of the piano bench as she giggled and he was forced to quickly wrap his arms all the way around her torso to steady her. “And then,” he continued, once he had released her, “if your fingers slip, you will be in trouble.”

Once she had caught her breath, she turned to him and said, “Maybe I picked the difficult movement on purpose, Herr van Beethoven. Maybe I want to be in trouble.”

“Well, one thing’s for certain,” he said jokingly. “You deserve to be in trouble for daring to play my masterpiece without the soul-crushing formal training that I had to go through in order to compose it.”

“Aw, poor Ludwig,” she pouted her lips and reached to tickle his hips.

He laughed and nearly toppled off of his feet, since he was in a squatting position behind her. "All right, all right, now let's hear you play it."

            "I have a question first."

            "Yes?" Beethoven watched her eyes, which were eager and bright.

            "What is this first movement about?" she asked. "What were you thinking about when you wrote it?"

            Beethoven hesitated, though he of course knew the answer to her question right away. "It is a piece born from both love and anger," he said. "I wrote it when I was feeling particularly lonely. At times I feel so full of love that I would like to share with another that I fear I will burst, and when it does finally explode out of me, it comes out angry and strident. This piece," he gestured at the piano, “Is what miserable, exhilarating longing feels like.”

            He paused then, worried that he had sounded too dramatic, but she was smiling in a satisfied way. “I thought it might be something like that,” she said simply, and then she turned, set her fingers, closed her eyes, and struck the first mournful C minor chord.

            Kira did very well through the slow introduction of the piece. Beethoven even allowed her to hold one chord for longer than he had written because she was playing so beautifully and expressively and he didn’t want her to stop. Then, after she performed the long descending run and began the fast part, he simply couldn’t refrain from punishing her.

            Her fingers fumbled as they darted up the keys, she lost her established time, and she didn’t move her foot from the echo pedal quickly enough to keep the notes from blending together. With each error that he heard, he drilled into her sides and ribs lightly with his fingertips, which of course was not helping her get back into the groove of the piece. In fact, within 60 seconds, the increasing frequency of his tickles finally overwhelmed her and she collapsed backwards onto his lap, laughing breathlessly and clutching at his hands. He enjoyed her laughter so much that every so often, just as she was about to stop laughing, he’d free one of his hands from her loose grip and tickle her tummy in random places - before pausing again to let her catch her breath.

            “I can’t get very far if you keep doing that,” she eventually gasped, letting go of one of his hands to wipe tears from her eyes.

            “Well, if you’re making errors, then you _shouldn’t_ be getting very far,” Beethoven said sternly but still smiling. “You should stop each time, go back, and fix the error before moving on. This is how I was taught.”

            “But that’s so _boring_ ,” she pouted, standing up. “You’d never be able to get to the meat of the piece that way. It’d take forever.”

            “Yes,” he agreed, “But once you had done the work, then the piece would be all the more beautiful for it. Here, how about you try again, and slow down the fast part to about half the speed you were just playing it?”

            She did this, and made it much further this time. Being a benevolent teacher (and not wanting to irritate or discourage her), he allowed several small errors to occur without intervening. Instead, as she reached the repeating call and response section in which the left hand jumps over the right hand several times to play at both the top and bottom of the keyboard, he allowed himself to lean forward and breathe in her hair, intoxicated by the music and her hair’s gentle fruity scent. She, feeling his breath on the back of her neck, arched her back as she continued playing as though she were on the cusp of orgasm…

            Though, as she saw it, music induced such a blissful state in her that she _constantly_ felt on the cusp of orgasm when she played....

            Then she got to the difficult part. The part that, try as she might, she was never able to get up to speed, and now, playing it slower, she found all of her mistakes thrown into sharp relief - it was the incredible, tension-building part where the right hand climbs the keys in a crescendo while the left hand descends...it was the part that brought tears to her eyes when she first heard Glenn Gould’s recording of this movement.

            She fumbled a few times and then hit a completely wrong note. Instead of going on as she had done the last time, she stopped abruptly and looked around nervously. He smiled devilishly back at her and flexed his fingers. A nervous giggle escaped her and she leapt up and ran around to the other side of the piano. He pursued her, teasing, “How will you learn if you don’t receive your punishment? Come back here or it will just be worse!” They danced around the piano, she trying to trick him by darting first one way and then the other, but ultimately, in the end, she ran out of breath and found herself cornered.

            She laughed in anticipation of what was coming as he approached her slowly, wrapped his arms around her, and lowered her gently to the ground. Still slowly, he lifted the hem of her blouse over her stomach, which rose and fell quickly as she waited nervously. Just above and to the right of her navel was a large, rounded coffee-colored birthmark.

            Breathing deeply, he set himself astride her legs (though she was not trying to get away) and lowered his face until he could trace a line of kisses around the birthmark and then all across the surface of her stomach. As he kissed, she giggled and squirmed around beneath him, blurting, "hehehe-not there -oh no hehehehahaha..." At one point, overwhelmed with giggles, she feebly interlaced her palms across her stomach. Very gently, he prised apart her hands and pinned them at her sides before kissing her tummy again. She gave a little squeal at the renewal of the tickling, but had largely run out of energy, so she could not exert any more resistance.

            "OK...OK..." she finally gasped and he relented, brushing a few sweaty strands of hair from her face. Her round cheeks were red and her eyes were a little glassy. She looked exhausted but happy. "Wow," Kira said after she had caught her breath, "You really like to tickle."

            The sound of the word made him feel shy, as it always did. "Well," Beethoven said, "You seemed to enjoy it quite a bit, too."

            She nodded, smiling just as shyly as he felt. "I've always wanted someone to do that," she said. "It feels so wonderful."

            Very softly, he stroked her stomach with the palm of his hand, and then, cautiously, he leaned forward and kissed first her forehead and then - upon hearing her sigh of contentment - her lips. It was just a closed-mouth, chaste kiss, but it electrified him. Tickling her turned him on and made his penis feel like it was buzzing. Kissing her felt like he was filled with warm, gooey caramel.

            The kissing seemed to take a long time, and then he found that his cheek was resting on her chest, just beneath her chin. They lay like that for some time, with her small hand massaging his scalp and wiry, flyaway hair, before she said, "So, did you still want to see around the campus?"

            Beethoven said that he did, and so they both got to their feet and dusted themselves off before leaving the practice room. For the next few hours, they walked around the campus, Kira pointing out the buildings where she had classes and Beethoven criticizing the clashing architecture. She especially had fun explaining technology to him and listening to him scoff about it.

            At one point, after he had used the men’s restroom, he called her inside and pointed at the paper towel dispenser.

            “What is this monstrosity?” he asked.

            “Oh, it’s a paper towel dispenser. You wave your hand like this,” she demonstrated, “And then you dry your hands on the paper.”

            “Good Lord, what a pampered generation you are,” he marveled, laughing at the paper towel dispenser.

            "Well, maybe we are, but at least we don't have to walk around with wet pantaloons from having wiped our hands on them. Or feces on our hands for that matter," Kira countered and Beethoven nodded, chastened.

            "But all of these machines do things for you that only mothers do for small children," he insisted. "I would not have been surprised if there was a machine in the stall that wiped your ass for you as well."

            Kira snorted and Beethoven felt accomplished. It pleased him that he could make her laugh even without tickling her, that she appreciated his humor.

At another point during the tour, they sat in an empty classroom inside of the castle building. Sitting at the desk beside his, Kira showed him her pencils and pens, drawing little doodles on a spare sheet of paper. He was legitimately impressed by this.

            "Ah!" he exclaimed. "How many hours would I have saved in composing if I had had something as wonderful as this - this -?"

"Pencil," she told him as he picked it up and turned it over in his fingers. It was a pencil that she had picked up off of the ground recently. It must have originally been a Halloween-themed pencil because it had pictures of jack-o-lanterns all over it against a green background.

            "Yes, this pencil," he said. Almost absent-mindedly, he drew five horizontal lines across the page with a haphazard treble clef beside them. He laughed delightedly as he easily filled in several bars of music. "Writing just this much would have taken me almost an hour with quill and ink," he told her. "And the ink splotches all over the place, I have to constantly wipe them off with my finger, and then I have inky fingers!" he poked her in the side with a wiggling finger and she giggled.

            "Keep it," she said, closing his fingers over the pencil.

            His eyes widened. "Really?" he asked. "Are you sure you want to give this to me?"

            She laughed. "I can literally pick another one up off of the ground. I think the physical cost of searching for another one is worth helping out the greatest composer of all time." Beethoven felt a happy pain in his heart, as though it were melting. "I'd give you a pencil sharpener, too," Kira added. "But unfortunately I don't have one of those. I usually just use the library's electric one. So you'll probably have to sharpen that with a knife when it grows dull."

            "I think I can manage," Beethoven said, smiling. He slipped the pencil into his pants pocket. Gazing into her green eyes, he told her, "I will treasure this present for the rest of my life."

            To his surprise, she laughed again. But then she scooted her desk closer to his so that she could lean her head on his shoulder and wrap her arms around him. "Then you can always think of me when you use it," she said.

            "I intend to," he replied in a murmur, trying to hold himself as still as possible so that he would not disturb her.

            Soon after, they left the building and were making their way down a hill when another girl approached from behind them, calling out Kira's name. The girl was tan and had narrow eyes and black hair that ended at her shoulders. She wore a backpack and olive-colored sneakers.

            "You all done with classes, lady?" the girl asked, addressing Kira but looking at Beethoven curiously.

            "Yes, how about you?"

            "Nah, I still have comp-sci. Going to lunch now. Who's this?" the girl asked, still watching Beethoven.

            "Amanda, this is my friend Ludwig. Ludwig, this is my roommate Amanda," Kira introduced them. Amanda shook his hand, her eyes narrowing even more with apparent suspicion.

            "Should I steer clear of the room for a few hours?" she asked warily.

            "No, don't worry about that," Kira said hastily.

            "OK. Well. I'm going to lunch. See you later tonight!" And off she continued down the hill.

            Kira and Beethoven continued walking down the hill, past other crowds of students, some of them walking together, others walking alone, none of them saluting Kira. Kira slipped her hand into Beethoven's hand. Her fingers were significantly shorter and thinner than his - they didn't even reach all the way around his hand. He smiled.

            "Why did she ask if she should steer clear of the room?" Beethoven asked.

            Kira smirked. "She was worried she might walk in on us having sex."

            "Oh," Beethoven blushed. "So that is a whole lot more casual now, I take it."

            "More casual than in your time? Yeah, I'd say so," said Kira. "Though, by all accounts that I've heard, you were certainly no paragon of chastity." She pushed open a glass door and allowed him to enter before her.

            He grinned at her teasing. "Fair enough, I have had lovers. Haven't you?"

            "No, actually," she responded as they walked down a cool hall with a speckled, marble floor. "Boys my age don't really seem interested in me, plus I wanted to find someone else who was into...well..."

            They climbed a flight of stairs, subsiding into silence as they passed a group of students going down, but they both knew that she was referring to her tickling fetish. Somehow, her admission that boys were not attracted to her filled Beethoven with a fiercer longing, as though he needed RIGHT NOW to personally make up for all that she had been denied so far in love.

            They turned through another glass door and found themselves in a small, non-descript courtyard containing scattered, covered, cushioned chairs. Some of the covered chairs were long enough for multiple people to lie down on.

            Kira walked over to one of the chairs that faced away from the door and lay down. "Ah," she sighed, stretching her arms over her head. "I'm tired. I thought we could lie down for a while, if you wanted," she added shyly.

            Without a word, Beethoven approached her slowly and lowered himself until he lay right beside her. With a hand slowly stroking the bony ribs of her quivering side, he nuzzled his head in her fruity-smelling hair, pressing his lips in a gentle kiss against her forehead. With a growl of longing, she climbed into his arms and lay her head against his chest. He took deep, contented breaths and felt tears form at the corners of his eyes. He was so happy, he felt as though he were overflowing. Soon, however, his emotion subsided in exhaustion, and both he and Kira fell asleep there on the chair.

            About an hour later, they woke up when Beethoven's leg vibrated twice in quick succession.

            "Do you have a _phone_?" Kira murmured in sleepy incredulity.

            Beethoven reached down and fished the small black device from his pocket. He pressed the center button, which illuminated the screen and showed a message from Goethe: "Heading to Serendipity now. See you soon."

            Beethoven sat up quickly. "Shit, I almost forgot."

            "What?" Kira asked, sitting up also.

            "Johann wanted me to go to dinner with him and his girlfriend at this Serendipity place. Do you want to come?" Beethoven asked her.

            Her eyes glittered and she smiled so widely that her teeth showed. "I'd love to come."

            "Do you know where it is?"

            "Yes, just a few blocks down N Street."

            They hopped up from the cushioned chair and exited the courtyard, heading for the front of the campus.

            "Thank God we don't have to use that incomprehensible Google Maps nonsense," Beethoven said as they walked.

***

            "So, Kira, what's your major?" Katie asked half an hour later as they sat at the dinner table together. The restaurant was quite small, but colorful murals and mirrors made the space appear larger, and Beethoven liked the poster near the restroom that advertised the movie, "Serendipity" (Kira explained to him what a movie was when he came back from the bathroom).

            "International politics," Kira said.

            Katie immediately nodded and said, "Oooh, super swanky, very nice."

            Kira nodded unsmilingly, her cheeks tight knots in her face. "And you?"

            "Marketing!" Katie said, too enthusiastically.

            Kira nodded. "Cool," she said.

            Their waiter brought them their meals and they were saved from having to further converse with each other. It could not be clearer that Kira and Katie were not destined to be friends. Katie's fakeness and effusive manner irritated Kira and Kira's slight awkwardness and quietness came off as coldness to Katie.

            Goethe, seemingly unaware of the rift between them, seemed delighted to have them all there and talked loudly throughout the meal, filling all of the silences. He nearly jumped from his seat in ecstasy when Kira started to talk to him about his book, _The Sorrows of Young Werther_. Katie watched in sullen jealousy as they discussed it.

            While Beethoven enjoyed the restaurant, he found the noise to be overwhelming and quickly fell out of the table conversation as it was hard work to hear over everything else that was going on. Kira seemed to notice his discomfort and stroked his leg under the table. The closer her fingers traveled to his knee, the more it tickled, and the more he would have to struggle to stay still. He could tell that she had noticed this and had made a game of it, massaging the top of his leg for a while until he had been lulled into a false sense of security - then traveling down toward the knee and watching him try to keep his face composed. She grinned devilishly as she did it, too.

            "Shall we head back to my place then?" Goethe asked cheerfully at the end of the meal. "Ludwig, I've got a spare room where you and Kiree-deary" - he winked at Kira. Kira smiled and Katie pouted - "can stay until midnight." He winked a second time and everyone understood that the wink contained unspoken sex.

            But Beethoven's blood had just grown cold. "What do you mean, until midnight? What is happening at midnight?" His pulse was rising, his blood pressure increasing. It was taking all of his self control to keep from raising his voice.

            "That's when we are taken back," Goethe told him matter-of-factly. Then he put a hand to his forehead, looking frustrated with himself. "Shit," he said. "I forgot to tell you. The time machine doesn't let us stay past midnight on any given day."

            Taking deep breaths, Beethoven lowered his forehead into his palm, the rest of the restaurant fading from his consciousness. Of course. There had to be something like this.

            Things were never easy for him. He had had an abusive father. He was losing his hearing, which made composing infinitely more difficult. And now that he had just met the most wonderful woman, someone who shared his sense of humor and sexual oddities, he would have to leave her. He could never stay with her forever. For a moment, he felt a hot surge of anger at Goethe. How could he have recommended that he look for women if he knew this caveat of the time travel the whole time? He was ultimately able to cool his anger through the realization that Goethe had never meant for him to find true love, just a cute girl to have sex with. It wasn't Goethe's fault that he had found someone more than either of them had bargained for.

            "Ludwig?" It was her soft voice, close to his ear. He felt her warm, tiny hand on his wrist and wanted to cry even more. "Are you OK?"

            He nodded, forced a smile on his face, and followed the rest of the group to Goethe's car, which waited outside of the restaurant.

***

            "I didn't know you would find someone as deep as her, man, I'm sorry," Goethe leaned against the refrigerator in his apartment, looking shocked and, uncharacteristically, very sincere. The girls were getting ready for bed, Katie pulling on her pajamas in Goethe's room and Kira taking a quick shower in the bathroom. "If I'd have known, I'd have told you about the time machine thing."

            Beethoven waved his hand, trying to keep the pain out of his face. "It's OK, it's OK. We'll make it work. We can come back every day, right?"

            "Sure, sure," Goethe said, his face a little strained. Perhaps he thought this suggestion would be cumbersome, but he was too apologetic at the moment to bring that up.

            Sensing this, Beethoven asked, "Could we find your friend and get a second time machine?"

            "I haven't seen him in a year, not since he gave me this one. There have been times that I've tried to seek him out, without success." Goethe looked away.

            "It's OK," Beethoven said again. "We'll find a way to make it work. Who knows? It has just been a day. It is very possible that our passion will not endure." He did not believe that, however. He wished Goethe good night and went to wait for Kira in the spare bedroom.

            As he lay on the bed, waiting and brooding, the door creaked open, and she peered around the edge of it with her round, kind face. Her expression was cautious but also happy to see him. As distressed as he was, he could not help but smile as she jumped onto the bed and climbed into his arms. Her hair, now that it was wet, smelled doubly nice, and he buried his nose in it as he idly tickled her beneath her ribs on her left side. She twitched and gave a small squeak of laughter before cuddling closer to him.

            "I know you're sad about the time machine thing," she whispered in his ear. "I am, too. But I think we might have something worth the effort, and we can figure the logistics out as we go along."

            "We will," Beethoven agreed. "We must. I must see you again. The thought of not seeing you is more odious to me than death." Despite his effort to remain composed, his voice broke and a few tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. Seeing them, she grew concerned and kissed them away from his face.

            "Come now," she comforted him, pulling his face against her chest. "Be still, be at peace. Let us sleep now, in each other's arms, and we can figure out the rest when you come again tomorrow."

            The promise of seeing her again tomorrow was enough to calm him. They pulled the blankets up to their shoulders and eased back onto the pillows. He gazed on her face as long as he could keep his eyes open. Then, finally, with his arm thrown over her shoulder, he fell asleep. When he woke in the morning, he was alone in his own bed in Teplice with the extra pillow beneath his crooked elbow. As he sat up in the pale sunshine, he wondered if she had dreamt of him.

 

**July 1812**

Taking a bottle of wine from the cool-room, Beethoven bustled eagerly around his writing desk, making sure everything was there so that he wouldn’t have to get up again. He set the wine with a hollow thunk on the wood, settled himself behind the desk, and prepared to write a letter to Kira.

The last few months had been the happiest in his life. He had ended up finding a schedule that worked for both Kira and Goethe. He visited her on Saturdays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. She worked or had homework on the other days, and Goethe usually visited Katie on Wednesdays and Fridays, so they never had to bother each other for the time machine since they used it on separate days. They simply passed it back and forth between them.

However, this week, Kira had exams for her summer classes, so she had banished him from the future for the time being until she was satisfied that this academic hurdle was behind her. Though he knew that she had to concentrate on her studying, Beethoven missed her terribly. But he had had a funny idea just yesterday, which Goethe reacted to with enthusiasm: he would send her a handwritten letter from the past that she could cherish until he was able to come again on the weekend. Goethe said that he could go to the future on any day this week in order to deliver the letter.

He sat at his desk and pulled his ink and quill toward him. He got as far as dipping the tip into the ink before he paused, pushed the ink bottle away, and pulled open the special drawer in his desk. He shifted aside some old letters and pulled out the pencil Kira had given him, decorated with cartoon jack-o-lanterns. Yes, he would write with this instead, he decided, to show her how much he appreciated the gift.

            As he always did whenever he wrote outside of his first language, he initially composed a draft of the letter in German before writing her copy in English.

            “My angel, my all, my very self,” he began the letter. "Only a few words today and at that with pencil (with yours)..." For part of the letter, he discussed the difficulty he had experienced traveling recently to visit friends in Karlsbad, where he was currently staying. There had been a storm, and his carriage had gotten stuck in a muddy road in the middle of a forest.

            He became so invested in the letter-writing process that he began to treat it more like a diary, pouring out some of his most intimate thoughts. He lamented the fact that, due to the time travel restrictions, they could not be properly together like a real couple: "Why this deep sorrow when necessity speaks - can our love endure except through sacrifices, through not demanding everything from one another; can you change the fact that you are not wholly mine, I not wholly thine?" Of course, he knew the answer. They could never wholly belong to each other, not when he had to disappear from her bed like a fugitive dream at midnight, not when he couldn't feel her stir awake in his arms in the morning, and lay with her sleepily while discussing the plans for the day.

            Content with the letter, he sent it with Goethe in the morning. However, he had enjoyed the writing so much that he decided to write her another one, later on the same day, that he would send along with Goethe later in the week.

            As the sun set outside of his window, Beethoven thought of Kira, holed up in one of the windowless rooms in the Business School, her papers spread out before her, preparing to spend the entire night studying. He knew that she had an economics exam the next day, at 8:00 am. He smirked and decided to begin his next letter with a subtle tease about the night of studying ahead: "You are suffering, my dearest creature." Still feeling himself to be in a joking mood, he referred to Goethe as the "mail-coach," implying in his writing that this letter would miss her today because he needed to give Goethe the letters early in the morning to ensure that they made it to her in the same day. He spent the rest of the letter bemoaning their separation. Earlier in the day, he had had to entertain some friends of friends, people he did not care for in the least, and moreover, people who did not contribute to his present happiness in the least. "...without you - pursued by the goodness of mankind hither and thither - which I as little want to deserve as I deserve it," he wrote, trying to articulate his feelings about the experience.

            Finally, when he sensed that he was starting to ramble, he concluded the letter, "Much as you love me - I love you more - But do not ever conceal yourself from me - good night - As I am taking the baths I must go to bed - Oh God - so near! so far! Is not our love truly a heavenly structure, and also as firm as the vault of heaven?"

            That night, he had a dream that he and Kira were building a house together in a peaceful corner of a meadow near a forest, somewhere in Germany. They were cheerful and chattering together. Kira brought him wood from a pile nearby, singing to herself, and as he nailed the boards together, he made note of the melody she sang, eager to incorporate it into a new soprano-soloist piece the next chance he got. All of a sudden, a clock-tower that jutted out over the trees chimed darkly, its tone heavy with doom. The house that Beethoven was building crumbled like sand, burying him. Kira shrieked and ran over to him, reaching down to him and shifting aside the rubble - but she was too late, he was falling, deeper and deeper, into a hole that had opened in the earth...

            He jerked awake, cold beads of sweat pooling on his forehead. Outside his window, gray shadows lounged on his lawn. He could barely hear the beginnings of birdsong. It must be about 4:00 in the morning.

            Finally realizing that he could not get back to sleep, and feeling lonely after the nightmare, he pulled a sheet of paper out of his night-desk and started to write to her again in an attempt to chase the loneliness away. "Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you," he paused for a moment, and then remembered her asking him something on the first day they had met, a turn of phrase that he had not recognized at the time. Smiling, he decided that he would use that phrase now. He was unaware that in doing so, he was fulfilling the history that Kira had already read about.

            "...my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved, now and then joyfully, then sadly, waiting to learn whether or not fate will hear us - I can live only wholly with you or not at all - Yes, I am resolved to wander so long away from you until I can fly to your arms and say that I am really at home with you, and can send my soul enwrapped in you into the land of spirits - Yes, unhappily it must be so - You will be the more contained since you know my fidelity to you. No one else can ever possess my heart - never - never - Oh God, why must one be parted from one whom one so loves. And yet my life in Vienna is now a wretched life - Your love makes me at once the happiest and the unhappiest of men - At my age I need a steady, quiet life - can that be so in our connection?"

            Then, after realizing that he would need to close the letter soon so that he could give it to Goethe (aka "the mailcoach") before he traveled to the future, Beethoven counseled her, "Be calm, only by a calm consideration of our existence can we achieve our purpose to live together - Be calm - love me - today - yesterday" - a subtle reference to how their love stretched across time, with Beethoven rooted in the past and she in the future - "- what tearful longings for you - you - you - my life - my all..."

            Hurriedly dressing himself in his wrinkled clothes from yesterday, Beethoven took this letter and the one from the previous evening, stuffed them in his pocket, and darted out into the rosy morning, running in the direction of Goethe's residence. At the thought of her reading his words and thus being connected with him, even distantly, he felt his heart uplifted with a joyful music, resonant with horns and timpani. As he rushed past sleepy-faced people who dawdled in doorways and meant nothing to him, he played with the tune - he let it run around in his mind like a horse in a vast field, let it tumble about and assume all of its natural themes and variations. He felt a chorus rise up beneath the horns, and realized that this was a song meant to be sung as well as played. He almost paused on the streetcorner, overwhelmed by the creative urge that was now pulsing through him like blood.

            For the time being, he pushed aside the urge and shelved the music away in his mind. He had to get the letters to Goethe on time. Nevertheless, he was excited. One day, he would sit down and start shaping this simple melody about joy into the theme of a great symphony.

 


End file.
